1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to voice chat techniques suitable for networked games.
2. Description of the Related Art
Techniques for connecting a plurality of game clients to a game server apparatus via a computer network and conducting networked games has been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. H10-276280 and H11-319319. The forms of connecting networked games include the peer-to-peer system wherein players in remote locations compete one-on-one and the multi-player system wherein a large number of players play at once. Recently, with the advent of higher performance routers and WDM technologies, IP Telephony technology has progressed and “Voice over IP” has become possible, enabling the exchange of voice information over IP networks which previously had been used for data communication. It has thus become possible for players to talk to other players via voice chat while playing a networked game. Through realization of this voice chat, players can better communicate with other players, thus enabling greater enjoyment of networked games.
However, in conventional networked games, because the game server apparatus could not manage voice, chat between game clients, any voice information inputted by one of the game clients was outputted to all the game clients connected to the network. Moreover, if voice input was sent from a plurality of game clients, these voice inputs would be outputted simultaneously and the problem that would occur was that it could not be determined who was saying what. In addition, this caused network traffic to increase beyond what was actually necessary. In conventional network games, there was also the problem that, even in the case of voice chat being exchanged between players, it was not possible to know who was chatting with whom, since there was no change in the display on the game screen. In addition, conventionally, the output volume of voice chat was set at a fixed level, regardless of the position of the characters within the game screen, so there was an unnatural feeling because the chatting of characters in the distance and characters in the foreground was all at the same volume level.